The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[355] Abū ‘Abdu’l-lāh bin Ismā‘īlu’l-jausī b. 194 AH. d. 256 AH. (810-870 AD.). See D’Herbélot art. Bokhārī p. 191, art. Giorag p. 373, and art. Ṣāḥiḥu’l-bokhārī p. 722. He passed a short period, only, of his life in Khartank, a suburb of Samarkand.

[356]Cf. f. 3b and n. 1.

[357] This though 2475 ft. above the sea is only some 300 ft. above Samarkand. It is the Chūpān-ātā (Father of Shepherds) of maps and on it Tīmūr built a shrine to the local patron of shepherds. The Zar-afshān, or rather, its Qarā-sū arm, flows from the east of the Little Hill and turns round it to flow west. Bābur uses the name Kohik Water loosely; e.g. for the whole Zar-afshān when he speaks (infra) of cutting off the Dar-i-gham canal but for its southern arm only, the Qarā-sū in several places, and once, for the Dar-i-gham canal. See f. 49b and Kostenko i. 192.

[358]rūd. The Zar-afshān has a very rapid current. See Kostenko i, 196, and for the canal, i, 174. The name Dar-i-gham is used also for a musical note having charm to witch away grief; and also for a town noted for its wines.

[359] What this represents can only be guessed; perhaps 150 to 200 miles. Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud ii, 213) quotes Ibn Haukal as saying that from Bukhārā up to “Bottam” (this seems to be where the Zar-afshān emerges into the open land) is eight days’ journey through an unbroken tangle of verdure and gardens.

[360]See Schuyler i, 286 on the apportionment of water to Samarkand and Bukhārā.

[361] It is still grown in the Samarkand region, and in Mr. Erskine’s time a grape of the same name was cultivated in Aurangābād of the Deccan.

[362]i.e.Shāhrukhī, Tīmūr’s grandson, through Shāhrukh. It may be noted here that Bābur never gives Tīmūr any other title than Beg and that he styles all Tīmūrids, Mīrzā (Mīr-born).

[363] Mr. Erskine here points out the contradiction between the statements (i) of Ibn Haukal, writing, in 367 AH. (977 AD.), of Samarkand as having a citadel (ark), an outer-fort (qūrghān) and Gates in both circumvallations; and (2) of Sharafu’d-dīn Yazdī (Z̤.N.) who mentions that when, in Tīmūr’s day, the Getes besieged Samarkand, it had neither walls nor gates. See Ouseley’s Ibn Haukal p. 253; Z̤.N. Bib. Ind. ed. i, 109 and Pétis de la Croix’s Z̤.N. (Histoire de Tīmūr Beg) i, 91.

[364] Here still lies the Ascension Stone, the Gūk-tāsh, a block of greyish white marble. Concerning the date of the erection of the building and meaning of its name, see e.g. Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Chīngīz Khān p. 171; Mems. p. 40 note; and Schuyler s.n.

[365] This seems to be the Bībī Khānīm Mosque. The author of Les Mosquées de Samarcande states that Tīmūr built Bībī Khānīm and the Gūr-i-amīr (Amīr’s tomb); decorated Shāh-i-zinda and set up the Chūpān-ātā shrine. Cf. f. 46 and note to Jahāngīr Mīrzā, as to the Gūr-i-amīr.

[366] Cap. II. Quoting from Sale’s Qur’ān (i, 24) the verse is, “And Ibrāhīm and Ismā‘īl raised the foundations of the house, saying, ‘Lord! accept it from us, for Thou art he who hearest and knowest; Lord! make us also resigned to Thee, and show us Thy holy ceremonies, and be turned to us, for Thou art easy to be reconciled, and merciful.’”

[367] or, buland, Garden of the Height or High Garden. The Turkī texts have what can be read as buldī but the Z̤.N. both when describing it (ii, 194) and elsewhere (e.g. ii, 596) writes buland. Buldī may be a clerical error for bulandī, the height, a name agreeing with the position of the garden.

[368] In the Heart-expanding Garden, the Spanish Ambassadors had their first interview with Tīmūr. See Clavijo (Markham p. 130). Also the Z̤.N. ii, 6 for an account of its construction.

[369] Judging from the location of the gardens and of Bābur’s camps, this appears to be the Avenue mentioned on f. 39b and f. 40.

[370]Seeinfra f. 48 and note.

[371] The Plane-tree Garden. This seems to be Clavijo’s Bayginar, laid out shortly before he saw it (Markham p. 136).

[372] The citadel of Samarkand stands high; from it the ground slopes west and south; on these sides therefore gardens outside the walls would lie markedly below the outer-fort (tāsh-qūrghān). Here as elsewhere the second W.-i-B. reads stone for outer (Cf. index s.n. tāsh). For the making of the North garden see Z̤.N. i, 799.

[373] Tīmūr’s eldest son, d. 805 AH. (1402 AD.), before his father, therefore. Bābur’s wording suggests that in his day, the Gūr-i-amīr was known as the Madrāsa. See as to the buildings Z̤.N. i, 713 and ii, 492, 595, 597, 705; Clavijo (Markham p. 164 and p. 166); and Les Mosquées de Samarcande.

[374] Hindūstān would make a better climax here than Samarkand does.

[375] These appear to be pictures or ornamentations of carved wood. Redhouse describes islīmī as a special kind of ornamentation in curved lines, similar to Chinese methods.

[376]i.e. the Black Stone (ka’ba) at Makkah to which Musalmāns turn in prayer.

[377] As ancient observatories were themselves the instruments of astronomical observation, Bābur’s wording is correct. Aūlūgh Beg’s great quadrant was 180 ft. high; Abū-muḥammad Khujandī’s sextant had a radius of 58 ft. Jā’ī Singh made similar great instruments in Jā’īpūr, Dihlī has others. Cf. Greaves Misc. Works i, 50; Mems. p. 51 note; Āiyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett) ii, 5 and note; Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal p. 331; Indian Gazetteer xiii, 400.

[378] b. 597 AH. d. 672 AH. (1201-1274 AD.). See D’Herbélot’s art. Naṣīr-i-dīn p. 662; Abū’l-fidā (Reinaud, Introduction i, cxxxviii) and Beale’s Biographical Dict. s.n.

[379] a grandson of Chīngīz Khān, d. 663 AH. (1265 AD.). The cognomen Aīl-khānī (Īl-khānī) may mean Khān of the Tribe.

[380] Ḥarūnu’r-rashīd’s second son; d. 218 AH. (833 AD.).

[381] Mr. Erskine notes that this remark would seem to fix the date at which Bābur wrote it as 934 AH. (1527 AD.), that being the 1584th. year of the era of Vikramāditya, and therefore at three years before Bābur’s death. (The Vikramāditya era began 57 BC.)

[382]Cf. index s.n. tāsh.

[383] This remark may refer to the 34 miles between the town and the quarries of its building stone. See f. 49 and note to Aītmāk Pass.

[384] Steingass, any support for the back in sitting, a low wall in front of a house. See Vullers p. 148 and Burhān-i-qāt̤i‘; p. 119. Perhaps a dado.

[385]beg u begāt, bāgh u bāghcha.

[386] Four Gardens, a quadrilateral garden, laid out in four plots. The use of the name has now been extended for any well-arranged, large garden, especially one belonging to a ruler (Erskine).

[387] As two of the trees mentioned here are large, it may be right to translate nārwān, not by pomegranate, but as the hard-wood elm, Madame Ujfalvy’s ‘karagatche’ (p. 168 and p. 222). The name qarā-yīghāch (karagatch), dark tree, is given to trees other than this elm on account of their deep shadow.

[388] Now a common plan indeed! See Schuyler i, 173.

[389]juwāz-i-kaghazlār (nīng) sū’ī, i.e. the water of the paper-(pulping)-mortars. Owing to the omission from some MSS. of the word sū, water, juwāz has been mistaken for a kind of paper. See Mems. p. 52 and Méms. i, 102; A.Q.R. July 1910, p. 2, art. Paper-mills of Samarkand (H.B.); and Madame Ujfalvy p. 188. Kostenko, it is to be noted, does not include paper in his list (i, 346) of modern manufactures of Samarkand.

[390] Mine of mud or clay. My husband has given me support for reading gil, and not gul, rose;—(1) In two good MSS. of the W.-i-B. the word is pointed with kasra, i.e. as for gil, clay; and (2) when describing a feast held in the garden by Tīmūr, the Z̤.N. says the mud-mine became a rose-mine, shuda Kān-i-gil Kān-i-gul. [Mr. Erskine refers here to Pétis de la Croix’s Histoire de Tīmūr Beg (i.e. Z̤.N.) i, 96 and ii, 133 and 421.]

[391]qūrūgh. Vullers, classing the word as Arabic, Zenker, classing it as Eastern Turkī, and Erskine (p. 42 n.) explain this as land reserved for the summer encampment of princes. Shaw (Voc. p. 155), deriving it from qūrūmāq, to frighten, explains it as a fenced field of growing grain.

[392]Cf. f. 40. There it is located at one yīghāch and here at 3 kurohs from the town.

[393]t̤aur.Cf. Zenker s.n. I understand it to lie, as Khān Yūrtī did, in a curve of the river.

[394] 162 m. by rail.